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Topic: Hobart VCM FINALLY put to good use... (Read 635 times)

I own a commercial kitchen for food trucks in Omaha, Nebraska and am also launching a new higher end taco truck called Chayo (www.chayotaco.com). The taco truck is currently 'on hold' as I've run short of cash, so I'm puttering along making small batches of tortillas and queso fresco for a local farmers market.

Last spring, I bought a very nice Hobart Vertical Cutter Mixer (HCM-450), intending to put it to a dual use - making tortilla dough for my food truck as well as making pizza dough for a pizza trailer which is renting space in my commercial kitchen. For various reasons, the owner of the pizza trailer just didn't seem interested in making anything fresh - using frozen ingredients, canned sauces, pre-made dough, etc. I'm at the other end of the spectrum - almost everything we make is made in-house, local and fresh.

Along the way, I discovered that flour tortillas are just as finicky as pizza dough - the right flour makes all the difference. I mistakenly bought some All Trumps flour for the tortillas, but they just wouldn't hold their shape - lots of springback and shrinkage. It's the high protein, of course. DOH! So I had some extra All Trumps in the bin and decided to make the pizza guy a standard 25 pound batch of high end pizza dough with it. The usual formula: 25 lbs All Trumps 50111 bromated flour, 6 & 8 ounces of sugar/salt, 3 oz SAF IDY, 14 lbs of cold water mixed for 1 minute. 1 lb of canola oil added after 1 minute of hydration mixing. Ball temp after mixing was 85 degrees and final weight was 41.5 pounds.

Standard dough management procedures: 22 ounce balls, top oiled, cross stacked at the back of the cooler for 45 minutes and then down stacked with top lid. The dough was made this morning (Sunday morning) and with a 3 day cold ferment should be ready to use on Wednesday.

Since the pizza guy was using a standard pre-made frozen 'bread dough' ball, what should he expect when switching to a high quality, high gluten, properly made and managed dough ball? He uses a Doyon double pass sheeter and Bakers Pride stone deck oven in his pizza trailer. I have lots of 'down time' in my kitchen while I'm making queso fresco and hope to get him hooked on the better quality dough balls. For less than a buck a ball, ready to use, with high quality ingredients, what could go wrong? LOL!

He's getting frozen dough lumps in plastic bags, which he puts in the walk in a couple days before using them. From what I've seen they seem awfully puffy and squooshy in the bag before they go out to his trailer for a lunch service. He's not serving on any sort of consistent schedule, often going days between one corporate lunch service or another. Never seems to do a dinner service or weekend night.

With the 'busy season' for food trucks/trailers upon us, I suppose he might be doing more, but seems to be using about 80-100 dough balls a week. Basically: frozen, thawed, unbagged; through the Doyon roller, topped and into the oven. Seems to produce a consistently brownish/lightly burnt underside with a dense, chewy, cornicione and thin (3/16") middle.

Just to confirm:He receives the frozen dough ball, places them in the walk in freezer for a couple of days holding, then slacks out/thaws, removes from the bags, forms into skins using a dough sheeter, dresses and bakes?Or, does he receive the frozen dough balls, take to the walk-in cooler to slack out for a couple of days, remove from the bag, open using a dough sheeter, dress and bake. It sounds like the second method is the one he is using. That being the case, you might want to target for a finished dough temperature in the 70 to 75F range, cross-stack for 3-hours before down-stacking, then deliver to him after 18 to 24-hours in your cooler. That should come pretty close to giving him something close to what he is presently using. If he complains that your dough exhibits too much memory or is too strong get some PZ-44 and add about 1% (you will need to experiment) to the dough. Remember that the PZ-44 will reduce the mixing time so just be aware of that.Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Your second method is the correct one: received frozen, kept frozen in freezer until a couple days before event, moved to walk in cooler (still in plastic bag) where they puff up and get super soft, sheeted into thin skin, dressed and topped.

To get the finished dough to 70-75 degree target range, I'll need to use walk-in cooler water (38 degrees) instead of tap water cool (50 degrees) or even a bit of ice water to keep it all super-cooled. Same for the cross stack - get them max cold before down stacking? PZ-44 should keep it more elastic on such as short (24 hour) cold ferment, correct?

This all sounds do-able, especially since the equipment is just sitting there 99% of the time...doing nothing.

Chayo;Could you give me a call at 785-537-1037? I'd like to discuss this with you.I'm located in Manhattan, Kansas just a couple hours south west of Omaha.I'll be away from my desk all of this afternoon but I plan to be back around 5:00 p.m. Just e-mail me with the time that you want to call me and I'll be sure to be at my desk to receive your call.Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor